First project of new year getting back to what got us started. Father teaching son and now grandson watching.

We started with beef ribs from whole foods which we rubbed with tasty licks black bart’s brisket rub and their red eye red meat rub.

We then added mustard and re-seasoned the meat with the same mixture as above. In a separate tray we did a rough chop of 3 cloves of garlic, we added one small onion, a pack of mushrooms, sea salt,pepper,garlic,onion powder.

Since we were working on grill and not a smoker, we had to set it for indirect cooking using pecan wood for added flavor as shown below.

For the 1st hour we cooked the ribs bone side down and we flipped them after 1 hour. After the second hour we placed our tray with veggies on hot side.

After about 30 min. we added our beef ribs and the remaining of the bottle of black berry merlot (I took care of the first part of the wine earlier)

We then let the ribs sit in the red wine and veggie mix for an hour. We then pulled them and let the ribs rest for 30min.

- Bios – What do you do for a living? How did you get into BBQ? How long have you been competing? What kind of pit do you cook on? What do you cook with? What’re your specialties? What awards have you won at competitions in the past? (Please list all achievements and dates won)

- Why should your team be chosen to compete??- Any links to your website and/or video footage you have of your team

*Interested applicants must put together a 3-5 minute video submission for review. Please showcase your personality, your desire to win and your incredible BBQ skills in the video. Prove to us that you have a shot at being and beating the best of the best in BBQ! Be creative and sell us on why you and your team should be on the show. Email video links and answers to the questions above to BBQPitmasters@originalmedia.com and Send any video/materials to

This season BBQ Pitmasters takes a different approach to the competitions that are being held. They’re taking us to different regions of BBQ and emphasizing on meats and the way they’re cooked in those specific regions. This approach to the competition is interesting in that we now have a whole show dedicated to a specific style or 2 from these areas. Judge Aaron Franklin really shined in this episode since his BBQ Restaurant, Franklin BBQ, is in Austin Texas and specializes in brisket in particular.

This season again brings us the meats from one of the top sources that is Snake River Farms (SRF). SRF is widely known in the BBQ world for their Waygu Beef and is highly used in competition BBQ. Lately there have been other meat suppliers burning up the charts on the competition circuit such as Creekstone Farms.

Before we go into details about how we think each contestant did, I’d like to visit the smokers being used! Harold “Buzzie” Hughes used a custom wood burning smoker with 2 75 gallon reservoirs that was built by himself. Will Fleischman was using a custom built indirect smoker that we were unable to catch the logo of what brand it was…we’re still investigating though. Ernest Servantes was using a custom built Pitmaker Smoker. We’ve taken a liking to these smokers as they’ve gotten pretty good ratings from our friend Bigmista and hell, they look nice as well.

Both Buzzie and Will are BBQ Restaurant owners however Will had never been in a BBQ competition before. We’d be the first to tell you that Restaurant BBQ and Competition BBQ are 2 totally different amimals..no pun intended. Ernest is a BBQ competition cook and caterer who has won several competitions.

This season’s first episode definitely didn’t hold back on the smack talk. You had Buzzie, tending to his custom pit that seemed like a fuel hog, hollering over to Ernest chastising him for “letting the pit do the work”. Buzzie then stated that Ernest was just sitting and drinking a lot of beer and not doing any BBQing. If you know like we know, BBQ, and BBQ competitions in particular involve a ton of beer consumption. Ernest’s witty response back was “I come to do 2 things buzzie, chew bubblegum and kick ass. Last night I ran outta bubblegum so all I have left is to whip some ass”. Another surprise in the show was Will Fleischman stating that foiling the meat is cheating. This process of foiling is called the “Texas Crutch” that comes from guess where?

While we can only judge on one of the 3 competition categories, which is appearance, we tried our best. Buzzie’s appearance was top of the line while Will’s over-cooked brisket seemed somewhat mushy or perhaps he could have submitted a better looking slice.

The BBQ Pitmasters started off this season with a sneak preview on Wednesday May 30th in Tupelo Mississippi. The judges for this season were Myron Mixon, Tuffy Stone and new comer Aaron Franklin where the others either competed or judged in seasons past.

One thing I loved about this episode is that there was emphasis on each contestant’s smoker. Jim Stancil was cooking on a ceramic cooker by Primo. Hank Vaiden came in with one Jack’s Old South smoker and one Backwoods smoker. Solomon Williams came in with a rotisserie smoker and I could be wrong but it looked like an Old Hickory or Southern Pride smoker. The show also mentioned what type of smoker each one was i.e. indirect, rotisserie, or water.

The subject meats in this competition was Beef Brisket and Beef Tri-Tip. The latter is something that is not seen much east of the Mississippi more on that later. Both meats were the “waygu” type which Tuffy explained came from a breed of cattle from japan that were massaged and coddled and fed a lavish diet. All of the cooks were given 11hrs to cook both of these meats. There was definitely a difference in cooking styles between the teams as some went hot and fast, which is slowly becoming more popular in competition BBQ while others went low and slow. The show revealed the temperatures that each team cooked at as well which in conjunction with the other info shared, I’m sure will give the novice cooker some awesome learning points should they want to make a jump into competition or even backyard BBQ. One thing we couldn’t understand is the team with the most experience with cooking tri-tips, Bare Knuckles BBQ at about 100 a year, starting cooking the tri-tip within the last hour allotted. Unsurprisingly comments were made about its taste and tenderness that could probably have been offset had this meat been given a little longer cook time. One other notable, was that Jim Stancil’s boxes was hands down top notch and bested both of the other pitmaster’s appearance.

Placing

3) Bare Knuckles BBQ

2) Cotton Patch Cooking Crew

1) Carolina Rib King

CONCLUSION

We believe the folks at Original Media knocked it out of the park this go round. This looks to be the best marriage between season 1 and 2 possible. We enjoyed all aspects of it from the banter to the educational lower-thirds throughout the show. Also the judging was changed to blind judging and making this that much closer to KCBS judging. Jim caught a bad break as it seemed he was punished for not including burnt ends with his brisket turn in. Stay tuned to Huck’s Hut for our recaps this season as we’ll be breaking down these episodes for you one by one!!!

The Meadow Creek TS-60 is built like a tank. The smoker itself weighs 425lbs minus the trailer.

As you can see here this unit has a charcoal basket in which we definitely had problems pulling out.

Charcoal / Wood basket

We were able to maintain a temp of 300 degrees for 3 hrs off of one split of wood and 10lbs of charcoal. We were able to maintain the temperature as long as we added a split every hour thereafter.

Here is a few photos that will give you the idea of the guage of metal and fasterners you’re dealing with which accounts for this smoker’s awesome ability to hold the temperature .

Open lid Note the thickness in metal

Fastener although opened here, it helps keep the heat in

We put a 15lb brisket on the bottom grate which is deeper than the top grate. We put 2 pork butts on the top grate but we found that all 3 could fit on the bottom grate as well. We was also able to put 3 racks of st. louis cut spares on the top grate and enjoyed the fact that we didn’t have to spin or flip them to make sure of an even cook thanks to its reverse flow draft.

Our meats were actually off but check the rack real estate!

The heat was controlled by the dampers on either side of the firbox(pictured below). These dampers did get hot after some time but that was expected. They control the temperatures on this bad boy quite effectively

Dampers to control temperature

Smoke stack with damper to allow smoke to escape

Removable ash pan to allow for easy dispose of ashes

Trailer option comes with a mini storage unit idealy for wood spits

We placed some spare spits of wood on the firebox as they were on deck prior to going into the firebox and they actually caught on fire thus confirming some of the leakage in the firebox. We were told after our first day of use and being disappointed with its fuel consumption that the newer models have an insulated fire box. The amount of lost heat from the firebox alone begs for the aforementioned insulated firebox. As far as the meat, our meat came out awesome and it’s a pretty good cooker

Pros

Heavy gauge tank like build helps ensure even cooking

Cook area is impressive, even better than it looks

Cons

Very heavy on fuel consumption(due to non insulated fire box)

Charcoal basket can be difficult at times to pull out especially when fire exists

We’ve been hearing grumblings as of late regarding a groundbreaking product from kingsford. We’ve double-checked our sources and indeed we have confirmed this to be rock solid.

What you see here is a Hickory infused propane tank brought to you by the great minds at Kingsford!! Word on the street is that you can look for this to be revealed on Memorial Day weekend. We also hear that there may be more word on this within a few days. At the time of this posting there is no other place on the internet reporting this other than a video from Clint Cantwell of Smoke in da eye. Members of the press are required to credit www.huckshut.com for this article. See the video from Clint below.

Well it sure looks like it to us. Looks like Myron Mixon is back as a judge and now Tuffy Stone is as well. We’re not sure who the other guy is all the way to the right but we’ll update this post once we’ve figured that out.